


innocent or not, you're a bet i care to take

by and_hera



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: And It's A Running Joke, Buffy the Vampire Slayer References, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Minkowski Doesn't Know She's Bi, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, i didn't put major character death bc scary but like maxwell... yeah, lovelace jacobi lesbian gay solidarity but like angry, wtf gay little war criminals, yes i hate jacobi yes i wrote 6k words about him we exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24530335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/and_hera/pseuds/and_hera
Summary: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Except, a little to the left: if a person does horrible, evil things in space and no one is around to see it, did they ever really do them? Were they ever really bad?The answer is yes. Disappointingly.or, Daniel Jacobi learns how to be a person.
Relationships: Daniel Jacobi & Alana Maxwell, Daniel Jacobi & Isabel Lovelace, Doug Eiffel & Hera & Renée Minkowski, Isabel Lovelace/Renée Minkowski (mentioned)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	innocent or not, you're a bet i care to take

**Author's Note:**

> i listened to all of w359 in like a week and god it's so good. i hate jacobi so much i just had to write a character study for him guys. fucking daniel boom boom wow jacobi god i hate his ass so much  
> disclaimer: i have never seen buffy the vampire slayer but i wrote it in here bc i think it's hilarious so i hope you enjoy my probably incorrect assumptions about the show xo  
> in other news, things are still going on in the world. black lives matter! acab! donate or help as much as you can! a comprehensive list of protests, petitions, and places to donate can be found [here](https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/). make sure to keep fighting!  
> title is from torches by the oh hellos but i changed a word, which is an absolute banger  
> leave comments and kudos if you enjoy! love u all!

The trip to Wolf 359 is… _long_.

Jacobi’s floating around the tech room, not really bothering to control where he goes. He has coffee. He slurps it obnoxiously loud through his child proof straw, because Kepler always goes the extra mile. Maxwell, strapped into her chair like a responsible person, flips him off without looking up from her screen.

“Oh, come on, _Alana_ ,” he says. “What are you even working on that takes that long?”

“If you must know, _Daniel_ ,” she replies, “I’m working on the autopilot.”

“We have one of those? It doesn’t talk.”

Maxwell turns around to give him a look. “Jacobi,” she says, “it actually _does_ talk.”

Jacobi does a flip. “Nah. Never heard it.”

“It doesn’t have a personality, of course, that’s entirely unnecessary for this ship, but it talks. The Urania has everything. I’ll get rid of it when we meet Hera, of course, because she’ll want to inhabit the Urania and I want to give her the option so she trusts me. But for now, yes. Autopilot.”

Jacobi shrugs. “Sure. Whatever you say.”

Maxwell groans. “You are never going to let me get this done, are you?”

“Nope!” Jacobi says, popping the P. “Clearly, the autopilot has done its job so far. Let’s do something.”

Maxwell spins her chair around and looks up at him. “What? Don’t you have a job to do?”

“Ehhhhhh, kind of? I mean, we’re coming up on the Hephaestus in a few days. There isn’t a ton for me to do besides count my many, many explosives.”

“Of course,” Maxwell says, cocking an eyebrow. “And what are you planning on doing with all your free time?”

“Dunno,” Jacobi says. “Was hoping you would have some fun, new ideas. Terrorizing Kepler?”

“ _Oh_ , but _Jacobi_ ,” Maxwell says, eyes wide in mock surprise, “we did that _yesterday_!”

“Pshaw,” Jacobi says, grinning. “I think some things are worth trying again. Don’t you?”

Maxwell grins at him and then spins her chair around, typing at her screen again. “Fine,” she says, not pausing, “but if he catches us, it’s your fault entirely.”

“But _Maxwell_ ,” Jacobi complains, drawing out the A, “I took the blame _yesterday_!”

“And you planned it yesterday!”

“We should at least take turns!”

“We should definitely _not_.”

Jacobi pushes himself off a wall until he makes it to the entrance, grabbing on to the doorframe. “If I didn’t know better,” he says, “I would think you didn’t like me, Alana.”

“Maybe you don’t know better,” Maxwell says under her breath, and Jacobi gasps dramatically. She laughs. “Get out of here,” she says. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Daniel Jacobi’s relationship with Buffy the Vampire Slayer is… complicated, to say the least.

He didn’t watch it when he was on Earth. It always looked pretty stupid, and the effects were _bad_ , to be generous. However, one Dr. Alana Maxwell decided to watch the entire show, all seven seasons, while in _space_. She assures Jacobi it isn’t because she thinks Buffy is hot (or at least, that isn’t the only reason), but it’s not like he can stop her if she does. 

The thing is, Maxwell tends to put the show on as she works, listening to it as she types away, endlessly working on some project or other. And Jacobi, well, his job is pretty _hands on_ , so he can get away with copious amounts of free time. 

Which means, of course, Jacobi ends up annoying Maxwell by floating around in her techy sci-fi room, and he gets… bits and pieces of episodes from her. Here and there.

“Why does Buffy wear a cross?” he asked once. Maxwell paused her typing and looked at him.

“Because,” she said, “she hunts vampires.”

“She does _what_ ,” Jacobi said. “I thought vampires were just… another thing. So much weird shit happens in this show.”

“Jacobi,” Maxwell said, voice increasingly high, smile increasingly growing, “what do you think this show is called?”

“Buffy?” Jacobi asked more than answered.

“Jesus,” Maxwell said, “Christ.”

“What?” Jacobi demanded.

Maxwell closed her eyes and put her head in her hands. “Jacobi,” she said, muffled, “the show is called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy the _fucking_ Vampire Slayer.”

Jacobi blinked. “You never called it that!” he protested, but Maxwell was already laughing over him, looking like someone handed her a new robot to fuck with. “It’s not my fault!”

“God, Daniel,” she said, “you aren’t the brightest, are you? You make very big things blow up, and that’s about it! Anything else knocking around in that brain of yours?”

Jacobi rolled his eyes. “It’s not like you weren’t aware of this already. We’ve been working together for a while.”

Maxwell caught her breath, shaking her head. “Jesus,” she said, “have you really only caught the episodes that aren’t about the vampires?”

Jacobi threw his hands up. “I guess so? It’s not like I’m actively watching, either.”

“One day,” Maxwell says, “I’m going to watch all of Buffy with you. Maybe you’ll actually catch on to the fact that it’s about vampires. And that, you know, the protagonist hunts vampires. And that, you know, most of the episodes revolve around that, and somehow you didn’t manage to catch any of the ones that do.”

“Fine,” Jacobi said, arms crossed over his chest as he floated upside-down. “I look forward to it.”

And, well, they didn’t. Get to watch it.

It’s easy to not be a person in space. 

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Except, a little to the left: if a person does horrible, evil things in space and no one is around to see it, did they ever really do them? Were they ever really bad?

The answer is yes. Disappointingly.

Jacobi’s hands are shaking. 

His hands don’t shake. They don’t. So, this is a surprise to him, because he is the put-together, good in a crisis Daniel “Boom Boom Wow” Jacobi, and he doesn’t worry about his hands shaking. Shaking hands can mean people die. He knows this from experience.

But his hands are shaking, and hmm, he wonders why. Is it because he killed a man with his bombs (not new)? Or is it because Maxwell is dead (new)? Or is it because Kepler has been using him all along (he wants to say new, but he knows it isn’t. he’s known. turned a blind eye. was it out of a misguided attraction? did he want Kepler to look at him like he looked at Kepler, for a time? or was he simply played?

whatever. not new)

The world’s ending, folks! And Daniel Jacobi, loose cannon, makes very big things blow up, jackass extraordinaire, is fucking relieved. Relieved enough that his hands are shaking. He didn’t even know he was afraid until he wasn’t.

He is real. He is a real human being. Minkowski has him in cuffs but he is _here_ and he isn’t an alien who comes back from the dead and he’s not okay but he’s _fine_.

What a stupid thing to be thankful for. What a stupid thing to be relieved about. 

You know, he never really believed in aliens to begin with. Not intelligent ones, at least. Like, yeah, of course there’s some life out there, but it’s most likely little microbes who aren’t capable of thought on some faraway planet, and by the time they evolve to the point of understanding, Jacobi will have blown himself up with a wayward explosive. Or the world will have ended. Either way.

It’s funny, isn’t it? Now, he’s in a fucking spaceship with a star that is blue! It should be red! And one of the people he thought was a person is an _alien_! Eiffel of course, freaked and lost his shit. Jacobi, for once, understood him, because he was scared out of his mind. Lovelace’s hands and eyes were glowing and her voice just- wasn’t hers. 

That could have been him! He could have been that alien! It’s not like Lovelace _knew_ she was a clone of herself! He could have been one of the fakes! He doesn’t think he is, not really, because he would have acted up by now, right? And he hasn’t, and the only real way to tell is to kill him, and Jacobi really doesn’t want that. So, he’s relieved. He’s relieved, and his hands are shaking.

His hands are shaking. They shouldn’t be.

“Guys,” Eiffel says one day, “you know how some of my memories have been coming back? Like, just a few, and stuff, but some of them?”

They’re sitting (all of them incorrectly, sans Hera, whose new body doesn’t seem to slouch. or maybe she just wants to look nice when she’s relaxing) on the couches of the aptly named Eiffera residence. Eiffel named it. Hera still thinks it’s stupid, but she’s learning to like the stupid things. And, well, Jacobi made the mistake of saying that these people are “his type of stupid”, and now he can’t insult anything they do without hearing a chorus of “oh but Daniel I thought you _liked_ us now” and “but Danny, what about your newly found heart? I thought you were stupid too”. 

“Obviously,” Lovelace says. “It’s all you’ve been talking about.”

“Well,” Eiffel continues, grinning, “I remember one of the shows I used to watch!”

A collective groan goes through the room.

“Doug, if it brings back your references, I’m not sure if I _want_ to hear about it,” Minkowski says, but she’s smiling, and everyone knows she doesn’t mean it.

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Eiffel says. “Remember, Renée? It was something I said the first time I met you- well, along with a _ton_ of other references, but Buffy was one that I can actually place, so-”

“Alana loved that show,” Jacobi says, cutting off yet another Doug Eiffel tangent. “She used to watch it while she worked.”

A beat.

“I mean, we can always start with Star Wars,” Hera says.

“No, no, that’s not what I meant,” Jacobi replies. “Though, I’m glad you all care about my feelings now. You know how to make a guy feel appreciated, you know-”

“Goddamnit, Daniel,” Minkowski says, “you don’t have to be so smug _all the time_ -”

“Yeah, Danny Boy,” Eiffel jumps in, grinning. “Don’t be so _smug_.”

“Don’t just repeat me, Doug.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, sir.”

Jacobi sighs. “What I was _trying_ to say is that I think it’s a good idea. We were going to marathon it one day. Alana and I. We didn’t. I’d like to now.”

Another beat.

“I think it’s on Hulu,” Lovelace says carefully. “Renée, do you want to pull it up?”

“Right now?” Eiffel asks.

“No time like the present, I suppose,” Hera replies. Before Minkowski can grab the remote, her eyes light up and the television lights up in turn.

“I’ll get the popcorn, then!” Eiffel says, climbing over the back of the couch (almost flipping it over) to get to the kitchen and sometimes, Jacobi forgets that he lost his memory. Some people never change, memory or not. He’s just- Doug Eiffel. He acts the same, even if he doesn’t know that he acts the same. It’s strange.

“Daniel,” Minkowski says, “you good? Looks like you kind of spaced out.”

Lovelace punches her in the arm. “What did we say about the space jokes?”

“I swear, it wasn’t on purpose! Jesus, Isabel, no need to be violent!”

Jacobi sighs. “Don’t flirt in front of me. I don’t want that in my life.”

Lovelace raises an eyebrow. “Jacobi, you said the word ‘menfolk’ in front of me as your way of coming out. When we were both in imminent danger. Shut the hell up, yeah?”

“Semantics. And I’m fine, Renée. Don’t worry about me. Worry about Mr. Memory Loss TM over there.”

Minkowski scrutinizes him for a moment, and he meets her gaze with what he hopes is a cocky, self-assured look. Eventually, she gives it up.

“Whatever you say,” she says, and Eiffel comes back with popcorn, and Hera cues up season one episode one.

Jacobi can’t help but feel like Maxwell is there.

Dr. Alana Maxwell was an interesting person.

A horrible one, of course. So is Jacobi. Let’s go be monsters, he said, and he meant it.

Let’s go be monsters. The last things he said to her, really. You’d think that might stop him from being so monstrous. Instead, he just bared his teeth.

Three years, they worked together. He and Maxwell got on from the start, really, teasing and banter like there was no tomorrow, and in a crisis, there wasn’t a better team. It’s why Kepler picked them for his team. It’s why they stuck together in the SI-5. Mr. Jacobi and Dr. Maxwell. Boom boom and smarter boom boom. Blunt force to the head and picking apart your brain. Burning, angry fire and cool, collected ice.

It’s interesting, because in a crisis, they both reacted differently. Both used their heads, of course. The SI-5 has no use for people who use their hearts. But for Jacobi, it was like all his usual spitfire went into his bombs and all that was left was the cold. And Maxwell, well, her calculating went into her robots, and she became _angry_. Back and forth they would go, passing that flame, Jacobi keeping it for everyday, Maxwell taking it on special occasions.

Kepler never took it. He didn’t want it. He was a spider, weaving his thread. He was also a puppet.

There are so many puppets in their story, aren’t there? So many puppets who have no idea they’re attached to strings. Dr. Volodin turned Selberg turned Hilbert, a pawn of Kepler’s and a bishop of Cutter’s. Jacobi and Maxwell, Kepler’s knights. Colonel Kepler, a piece of Cutter’s. All of them, every single person, being played by those higher than them being played by those higher than them.

Cutter wasn’t a puppet, nor was he a piece. He and Pryce were doing that one funny skit, the one with the arms? Cutter had his arms behind his back and Pryce was using hers instead. She couldn’t see and he couldn’t move. Not quite puppets, not quite puppeteers.

Whatever. Still dead. Still forgetting.

Back to Maxwell, though, because it all comes back to Maxwell, in the end. It does for Jacobi, anyway. Because without Maxwell, without his best friend, he wouldn’t have lost that fire.

At first, when she died, he thought it was her passing him the torch for good. Because, God, he was angry. He was so goddamn angry, he wanted to set the world on fire, he wanted to be a part of the flames, he didn’t have a bomb on the main engine but Jesus Christ he wished he did. Or at least, he thought he did.

(you know, Minkowski didn’t have a bullet in the chamber and he didn’t have a bomb on the engine. it’s almost poetic, really. two people who don’t especially want to hurt the other but especially want to hurt themselves)

But really, Jacobi thinks the real fire died with her. With Maxwell. Died with her being a truly horrible person right before dying in a mess of explosions and too-eager trigger-fingers. 

It was Jacobi’s fault, really. He won’t admit it. Out loud, he blames Kepler, maybe Cutter, or on a bad day, Minkowski. But he knows it’s himself, in the end. His stubbornness. Maxwell always liked that he was stubborn. He doesn’t even think she minded it at the end. 

But he didn’t think Minkowski would do it, or maybe he just thought Maxwell was immortal. She always talked like she was. Or, maybe, the awful option, he just didn’t care about her enough to disarm the bomb. And Jacobi is awful, isn’t he?

Dr. Alana Maxwell was, frankly, a horrible person. Mr. Daniel Jacobi was- is, too. And she was the best person he knew. And she, for the first time in a very long time, gave him a family, again.

The SI-5 was his family. Maxwell was like an obnoxious little sister. Kepler was the oldest brother with a stick up his ass. Yeah, Kepler was the worst, but so was Maxwell, so was he. Kepler gave the same favored whiskey speech to everyone he ever met and needed to intimidate and Maxwell would sometimes have a little too much fun using technology to manipulate others and ruin people’s lives and Jacobi would sometimes blow up places he didn’t really _need_ to. It just made things easier. And they were one fucked-up family.

Jacobi never really got on with his parents. He had a little brother, but he was eleven years older, so they were never close. Once he left, he was gone. He doesn’t talk to them, anymore. 

Family one: a wash. Family two: about to burn, burning, burned. Family three: ???

He misses Maxwell. He misses knowing that, no matter what, here is a person who will always back him up. He misses being able to mess with her while she worked on cool futuristic sci-fi tech shit and he misses her attacking him because he made fun of her height one too many times. He misses _belonging_ , because no matter how much he belongs with the crew of the Hephaestus, it will take a long time for them to all trust each other. It will take a long time for them to become a family the way he and Maxwell and Kepler were, if it was only for a few years.

Dr. Alana Maxwell.

Jacobi wonders if she knows how much she’s missed, and Jacobi wonders if she’s disappointed by it. She always wanted to be remembered, but it was for her work. 

He doesn’t know if she ever wanted to be remembered as a friend.

So, it turns out that compartmentalizing doesn’t work.

Yeah. Surprise, surprise. Blowing shit up as a coping mechanism only works for so long, guys, despite Jacobi’s previous hopes.

Lovelace finds him.

“Jacobi,” she says, “you good?”

“What do you think?” he fires back, because, well, he very clearly is not.

She slides down against the wall of the Urania, sitting next to him but far enough away not to touch. “Jacobi, did something happen?”

He scoffs. “Yeah. A while ago. You might remember it! My best friend was fucking shot and it was my fault, my commanding officer betrayed me, everything went to hell for a long, long time, most of that time having me in cuffs and unable to do anything besides be bitter, I was terrified I wasn’t real for a while, and I never really processed much of it until now.”

Lovelace hums. “I think I know something about not knowing if you’re real.”

“Well, no shit.”

“Jacobi.”

“ _Isabel_.”

“Look, I know Min- _Renée_ wants us all to embrace the whole ‘first names thing’, and that’s _great_ , but I haven’t had anyone who isn’t Cutter call me Isabel in years, so take it easy, yeah?”

Jacobi sighs. “Yeah.”

Lovelace kicks at his foot with her own. “You know, you have a place now. You can have a mental breakdown there, probably.”

“Sometimes,” Jacobi says, “the apartment doesn’t feel quite real.”

“Because space,” Lovelace says.

“Because space,” Jacobi agrees.

“You know, Jacobi, I didn’t like you all that much before,” Lovelace says.

That gets a laugh out of him. “Woah, really?” he asks, sarcastic as always. “What a _shocker_ we have here!”

Lovelace blows a stray curl out of her face. “Listen. The point is, I don’t think that any more.”

“You really know how to make a guy stop freaking out, Lovelace. I think it’s a gift.”

“God, would it kill you to stop being such a little _shit_?”

“I’m sorry, I’m just having a _bit_ of a crisis right now over the _copious_ amounts of space trauma I have ignored until this very moment, _so if I’m a little snippy-_ ”

“Listen,” Lovelace says, in that Big Tough Captain voice, and Jacobi almost instinctively sits up straighter. Almost. He keeps slouching. “We’ve all been through some shit, okay? I get it. I do. You know I do.”

“I know that you kept me hostage for months after killing my best friend, Captain.”

“Yeah, because you tried to _murder us_ , dickwad.”

“Okay, yeah, I guess that’s fair. Continue.”

Lovelace sighs. “Jacobi. You have some terrible coping mechanisms. Am I right?”

Jacobi sighs. “Yeah.”

“You also have been through some really, really bad shit. And done some bad shit. Am I right?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re never going to stop thinking about it. I haven’t stopped thinking about it. But, eventually, you’ll come to terms with it, yeah?”

Jacobi closes his eyes. “Whatever you say, Cap.”

“Hey.” Lovelace bumps into him. “Guess what.”

“What,” Jacobi says dryly.

“I like the womenfolk.”

He opens his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says, “is that even a word?”

“Sexist, much?” Lovelace asks, and she bursts into laughter. “God, you’re so fucking stupid, Jacobi,” she says, grinning. “Imagine coming out to someone in the middle of a crisis while saying the word ‘menfolk.’ I didn’t even have time to process it!”

“Wait,” Jacobi says, “you _didn’t_ know I was gay? Isabel, I knew you were gay!”

“Listen,” Lovelace says.

“No. I am from San Francisco! I have a single hoop earring! Are you kidding me?”

“I’m not!” She’s still laughing, and Jacobi can’t help but join her. “I cannot tell with people, okay! Not my fault!”

“Maxwell was a lesbian, too,” Jacobi says, “and I’m pretty sure Kepler was like, gay, but he didn’t know it.”

“Oh, definitely,” Lovelace agrees. “Whiskey motherfucker. Eiffel’s bi, he came out to us at dinner one night while you and Kepler were… out of commission, and Minkowski almost spit out her drink.”

“Wait. Isn’t Minkowski…”

Lovelace sighs. She takes a drink from a beverage Jacobi did not know she had with her. “I don’t think she knows that she is,” she says dryly, and Jacobi puts his head in his hands.

“God, you people are so fucking stupid,” he says.

Lovelace only nods, shaking her head. She’s still smiling, and it’s a fond one she usually only reserves for when she sees Eiffel remembered something else, or when Minkowski does something rebellious, or when Hera is particularly clever. Jacobi wonders if it’s for him.

“I miss her,” Jacobi says. “I miss all of it. The SI-5. Even if I shouldn’t. Even if I was a horrible person.”

“Even if you still are a horrible person. You aren’t, I don’t think. But it’ll take some time to grow out of it.” Jacobi looks at her. “I’m still… I’m still making sure there isn’t anything left of _him_ in my system.”

“No one made me do any of it,” Jacobi says.

“No. And it was like, some horrible stuff, dude. War crimes.”

“At this point, I think we all have-”

“Oh, yeah, definitely. I know.” Lovelace takes another drink. “Maybe get therapy.”

“Therapy.”

“Yeah. It helps Renée.”

“Minkowski goes to therapy?”

Lovelace hums. “Yeah. I’m glad. I might start going to, really. It’s probably a good idea, after… everything.”

Jacobi smiles, and it’s not completely humorless. “Yeah. Maybe. Know any therapists who deal with people being aliens?”

“Things are different now, _Daniel_ ,” Lovelace says, ignoring him. “But we’re staying. If you want to stay with us.”

“I’m not leaving Earth any time soon.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Yeah.” Jacobi almost laughs. “Thanks, Captain. Lovelace. Isabel.”

“No problem,” she says lightly. “If you ever want to talk- I’ll listen.”

The trip back to Earth takes exactly two months. Technically, they could go into cryo sleep for the time. However, no matter how little Eiffel remembers, no one is going to put him there ever again, and no one wants to leave him alone.

Jacobi was given the option. To go to sleep. But really, he has nothing left for him on Earth. He’s in no rush. So, he takes all the time he can in the stars, looking at the space around him. He could help Eiffel, Minkowski, and Lovelace try and put Hera into the AI body Maxwell brought for experiments, but he doesn’t. 

The Urania has an observation deck. No matter how many bad memories Jacobi has from the Hephaestus observation deck, he likes the Urania’s. It’s nice. It reminds him of Maxwell.

“Jacobi,” Minkowski says loudly, bursting into the room without slowing. 

“Woah, woah, where’s the fire, Commander?” he asks, and then freezes. “Wait, there isn’t an actual fire, right?”

Minkowski sighs. “No. There isn’t. I was just- well, I was wondering, uh, well. I don’t want to be rude, and this is a bit personal, and, well, I know you don’t trust me that much, but aren’t you-”

“Are you asking if I’m gay, Commander,” Jacobi says dryly, and Minkowski reddens. “Because yes, I am. Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s not that,” Minkowski says, and then backtracks. “Well. Sorry. Sort of. Good for you, and stuff? I accept you?”

Jacobi puts his head in his hands. “Please, Renée. Just get on with it.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea, I think,” she says, and takes a deep breath. “Well, since you’re, you know-”

“Gay,” Jacobi supplies.

“Yes, that. Do you know if other people are, well…”

It takes him a minute, but oh, Christ. “Minkowski,” he says slowly, “do you want to know if Captain Lovelace is also gay?”

Minkowski closes her eyes. “Yes.”

“Oh yeah, definitely,” he says, despite her never really telling him. They have a sort of understanding, though, and he’s pretty sure Lovelace would want him to be a good person for once and share with the class.

“Thanks,” Minkowski says, and starts to leave, looking like she wants to pretend this whole conversation never happened.

“Wait,” Jacobi says, and she freezes. “Renée, I thought you had a husband.”

“I do!” she says defensively. “I’m not- I don’t know what you’re implying, _Daniel_ , but-”

He throws his hands up in surrender. “Not implying anything, Commander. Don’t mind me.”

Minkowski rolls her eyes, and he thinks he hears her mutter something about when one smartass loses his memory, another must take his place. “Listen, Jacobi, I was just- curious. That’s all.”

“Of course, Commander,” he says dutifully, and she rolls her eyes. She also flips him off. Then she leaves.

“Dear God,” Jacobi says to the empty observation deck, and if he spends a moment laughing at Minkowski, no one has to know but himself.

“You know, Maxwell,” Jacobi says, another day floating in her workspace, “I think Kepler likes you more than me.”

“Maybe it’s because of my charming personality and sharp wit?” she replies immediately, as if she knew he was going to bring it up. She’s always like that. She always seems to know what’s on his mind. Jacobi wonders if that’s what having a best friend is like.

He laughs at her. “Oh, you’d need some of that, first,” he replies. “I think you only know how to talk to robots, _Doctor_.”

She shakes her head, and he can’t see her face, but he’s sure she’s rolling her eyes at him. “Whatever you say, Mr. Jacobi.”

“Maxwell,” he says.

“What?”

“Do you like working with the Si-5?”

She hums. “Yes,” she says. “I do.”

“Why?”

“Because I get to work on everything I want. No limitations. No restrictions.”

“Except for Kepler, of course.”

“Yeah. Except for fucking Kepler. God, he just brings the rest of us down.”

“He really does.”

“You’re the one with a big gay crush on him, Daniel!”

“I have no such thing!”

“Good. He’s the worst. I really hope you don’t like him. That relationship would be _awful_.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“Great, really.”

“Oh, shut up, will you?” Jacobi says, and she laughs, bright and happy. Maxwell’s always smiling. She’s the one everyone likes, out of their little team, the young and happy and friendly one. No matter how ruthless she can be.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, and unstraps herself from the chair. She pushes herself into the air, taking Jacobi’s coffee and drinking it. Loudly.

“I hate you,” he says.

“Right back atcha. Do you like working with the SI-5?”

Jacobi thinks. “Maybe,” he says. “I like working. I like you.”

Maxwell fans herself. “I’m so touched. Can’t believe I have my own gay best friend.”

Jacobi laughs. “Yeah, sure. But it’s okay. I’m just glad to have something to do.”

“So, you came to space because you were bored?” Maxwell grins at him. Chews on the straw.

“Not exactly,” he says, because sometimes he forgets that she doesn’t know him. Not that thoroughly. She’s still new. She’s twenty-five to Jacobi’s thirty-one, and it isn’t that big of a difference, but she’s young. 

“Jacobi,” she says, “I know you blow shit up for a living. I kinda assumed you have a tragic past. It’s alright.”

He sighs. “Yeah, well,” he says, “I make very big things blow up. Sometimes, if an accident strikes, those very big things are people.”

Maxwell, for her credit, doesn’t flinch. “And I work on robots with real personalities,” she shoots back. “I control them. Not like I’m a wonderful person, either.”

Jacobi holds out his hand. Maxwell shakes it. 

“Here’s to being horrible people,” Maxwell says, handing him the coffee.

“Here’s to never apologizing,” Jacobi agrees, and he takes a drink.

The first thing they do back on Earth is sort out who is staying with who.

Well, okay, no. The first thing they do is threaten Goddard Futuristics with so many goddamn lawsuits and get paid a _lot_ of money in return for continuing to be legally dead. Jacobi knows it will run out eventually, but for now, it’s more money than he’s ever had, and between the others getting paid just as much and the loss of Cutter, Pryce, and Rachel, he assumes there’s obviously a dent made in Goddard’s well-oiled machine.

But after that, they work it out.

Of course, Eiffel is going back to Texas to see his daughter. The one he doesn’t remember. However, Jacobi did see him listening to his last tape, the one he made before Minkowski tried to send him home, and staring into space like something clicked. Maybe he’ll remember. Hera said she hoped he would get memories back, over time. 

Anne is her name. His daughter. She’s probably six or seven by now. Jacobi’s never been good with kids, but he can imagine funny, go-lucky Eiffel doing fine. The problem is, Eiffel isn’t really… Eiffel anymore. 

He saw Eiffel, Minkowski, and Lovelace learning ASL in the main room of the Urania about a month into the flight home. He joined them, and didn’t bring up how eagerly Eiffel seemed to want to pick it up. It was the first time Jacobi really _actively_ tried to be nice to them, besides when he saved their lives. And he didn’t mind it.

But Eiffel is going home.

Minkowski- well. Jacobi isn’t sure what she’s going to do. Goddard told them that they aren’t supposed to let people know they’re alive. Yeah, it was just to save their own ass, so it’s not like they have to obey that rule, but. Minkowski’s a stickler for rules. Jacobi doesn’t doubt that she’ll go look for him, find her husband. But he doesn’t know if she’ll stay. 

Lovelace is going on vacation. Disney World. Then she’ll go stay with Minkowski, probably. 

Hera is odd, because she’s in a body now. She’s an android that looks incredibly human, and she likes her new body- at least, she says she does- but everyone can tell she misses being the omnipotent, huge being she was on the Hephaestus. And on the Urania. Hell, on the Sol, too. She doesn’t glitch anymore, but sometimes she talks very fast and seems like everything is overloading and she asks Eiffel if it’s because her systems are wrong and he has to tell her that no, she’s just anxious. Hera is a person, but she isn’t used to walking like one.

There’s a way for her to still inhabit a place and not the body, so eventually, there will probably be a house involved, one with Hera controlling it, because she likes having control. But for now, she is in the body that is taller than Jacobi (five eleven is a perfectly normal height, he knows it, but she’s six one and it’s just _unfair_ ). He hates it. She doesn’t stop making fun of him.

Jacobi- he doesn’t know where he’s going. There’s nothing left for him here; his family doesn’t talk to him, Maxwell is dead, Kepler is dead, and Daniel Jacobi has never been good at making friends. It makes sense that the closest thing he has to friends now are as follows: a guy who he tried to kill who then kept him imprisoned for months and later lost his memory; a woman who killed his best friend, also imprisoned him for months, and then they kind of forgave each other; a woman who didn’t really do a ton to him besides be an enormous dick and then give him some of her blood so he is part alien to not be possessed; and an android who was hijacked by his best friend before she died and is now still getting used to her new body.

God, they’re a mess, aren’t they? Jacobi’s pretty sure everyone has tried to kill everyone at some point, or at least been intimately involved with the murder. Sometimes, it succeeded. Maxwell. Hilbert. Lovelace (sorta). Cutter. Kepler. 

“We should call each other by our first names, now,” Minkowski said when they landed, and Jacobi hates it. He hates thinking about everyone as a person. He hates thinking of himself as a person. It’s weird enough that everyone calls Eiffel “Doug” and Eiffel calls Minkowski “Renée”. He probably won’t drop the habit of calling them their titles for a while.

“Daniel,” Lovelace says, speak of the devil, “where are you headed?”

He shrugs, carefree as ever. “I’ll figure it out,” he says. “Not like I’m short on cash. Maybe I’ll say hi to you, _Isabel_ , if I ever go visit Disney World.”

“You can come with me, you know,” she says nicely, and he brushes her off. Because Jacobi doesn’t need help! Jacobi pushes his people away and if they don’t come back, well, they weren’t good enough friends, were they? It was their fault (at least, that’s what he tells himself).

Minkowski punches him in the arm. “Daniel,” she says, in her Big Tough Commander! voice that he hates, “you can’t just go it alone. We’re all in this together.”

“Hey,” Eiffel says, and his eyes unfocus and focus again. “Is that… High School Musical?”

“Jesus Christ,” Hera says, “I can’t believe he remembered High School Musical before all of us.”

“It’s not like I _control_ it! And I know you all just fine now!”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Minkowski says, and she sends a knowing look to Hera and a kind one of Eiffel. “But, Daniel,” she says slowly, and it almost makes Jacobi want to run. “You can’t just _leave_.”

“Yeah, man,” Eiffel says, “you’re a cool guy! I want to keep talking to you.”

Jacobi scoffs at that. “Thank you, Eiffel,” he says, because he’s horrible but he isn’t that cruel, “but Minkowski, I can take care of myself-”

“Jacobi,” Lovelace says, “what happened to ‘my kind of stupid’? Huh?”

Jacobi rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on. Yeah, you guys are great. Sure. Fine. But I don’t need you. I’m fine.”

“You could have left,” Hera says carefully. “You didn’t have to save us. You could have left on the Urania alone.”

And, well, it’s not like she’s _wrong_.

“If you don’t remember, I was pretty busted up too, Hera,” he says pointedly, “and it would have been nice to have someone to help. And, it’s not like I could cash in my bet without having someone else around-”

“It’s okay for you to want to stay,” Minkowski interrupts, and he shuts up. “We’re not going to leave you, either.”

Jacobi sighs. “Who says I want to stay?”

Lovelace grins, teeth bared. “We did. And you’re going to stay. I think you’ve kind of figured out how stubborn this crew is by now, Daniel.”

“Yeah, Dan,” Eiffel says, because even without his long (long!) list of shows to take nicknames from, calling someone by their regular name is something he’s incapable of doing. “We’ll learn to live on Earth together!”

“I guess you don’t know how to live on Earth, either, do you?” Hera asks lightly, and he shrugs in reply. She smiles. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Well,” Jacobi says, blowing out a long breath. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“Nah,” Minkowski says, “we all have a choice. We’re just helping you find the right one.”

“Mr. Jacobi,” Maxwell says, looking up at their shiny new spaceship, “are you ready to change the world?”

He smiles. “I think so, Dr. Maxwell.” 

She takes off walking, and over her shoulder, she calls, “Come on! Let’s go be monsters.”


End file.
